Solicitors At Church Polls Anger Voters

June 4, 1986|By Mark Andrews of The Sentinel Staff

SANFORD — Dozens of Seminole County voters and church officials called the county elections office Tuesday to complain about people soliciting signatures for a pro-lottery petition near churches being used as polling places.

County election officials are worried that some churches will withdraw permission to be used as polling places in the fall elections because of objections about gambling being promoted on their premises.

Elections Supervisor Sandra Goard said the loss of church use would hurt because ''it is hard enough to find polling places as it is.''

Goard said she and her staff fielded 40 to 50 calls Tuesday from people who did not like the presence near churches of people soliciting signatures on a petition to put a state lottery referendum on the November ballot.

Callers were told that the elections office has no authority to force people to leave, even though church officials consider their premises private property.

County attorney Nikki Clayton said she had advised the elections office that the most recent laws and court rulings on the matter seem to favor petition solicitors. All polling places are considered public property while they are used for such purposes, Clayton said.

Solicitors of petition signatures turned up at 44 of Seminole County's 82 polling places Tuesday morning, Goard said. Twenty of those were churches. She said she had asked pro-lottery organizer Frank Mirabella to avoid stationing his people at churches because problems were anticipated.

When the first complaints came in early Tuesday from the First Baptist Church of Sweetwater and the New Life Fellowship Church in Winter Springs, Goard said she persuaded Mirabella, executive director of an organization called Excellence Campaign: an Education Lottery, to pull his people from those sites.

After Goard relayed more complaints to Mirabella later in the day, she said he told her he could not afford to remove his people from the polling places. Mirabella could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

None of the church officials contacted Tuesday by The Orlando Sentinel said they had decided to stop allowing their use as polling places.